Detailed Analysis - Environmental & Collectibles
Collectibles - Mysterious Shards
Collectibles are a staple of an open-world game and Assassin’s Creed have been using them since the 1st game. While they were never really important, recently there is a better understanding of using them to tell a narrative, even if it’s a small one. Since 2017 however, most of the collectibles that have been Utilized sadly don’t take advantage of their expansive count and are just there as A novelty. Sadly Mirage follows suit and while it does have other collectibles, the Mysterious Shards are the only things that offer a semblance of Narrative strength.
During Basim’s travels in Baghdad, Basim would reconnect with Nehal and reminisce about their history and also Basim’s dreams. At one point, Nehal points Basim to a far-out location in the Baghdad desert and finds a Precursor Temple Underwater. Inside the temple lies weapons and Armor from the age of the precursors but in true Assassin’s Creed fashion, the gear is locked behind doors that need special keys. This is nothing new with the Assassin’s Creed series. In Assassin’s Creed 2, Ezio Endeavored to Acquire the armour of Altair, locked behind a gate that needed 6 keys that laid with Assassin’s buried all over Italy. Each tomb was incredibly fun to navigate but with Mirage, the doors can only be unlocked using mysterious Shards hidden all over Baghdad, in the hands of Order members, treasure chests and buried locations.
With each shard, Basim unlocked the doors and took all within and would use them in his exploits in Baghdad. While the rewards were quite nice, the Exercise in getting them was somewhat tedious and not very challenging and the Narrative values they offered were minimal as they didn’t bring context. The only possible context is that they belonged to Loki in his time during the precursor era, seeing as Nehal pointed Basim to them and Nehal is just Basim’s past life.
Environment - City of Baghdad
During its prime, Baghdad was an incredible city and a true marvel of the medieval era. A city of learning, art and science, Baghdad was truly ahead of its time. Because Baghdad was sacked by the Mongols and destroyed, there are very few records about what the Incredible City looked like but Ubisoft’s world designers have done an excellent job at creating a true marvel that represented the qualities of a Medieval city and also a sprawling playground that highlights the classic signature moves of the Assassin’s Creed series. Baghdad is a beautiful place and it showcases the best qualities of a Ubisoft sandbox. Set during the Islamic Golden Age, Bagdad is a centre of learning, science and the arts (poetry) and that’s why Baghdad is so fun to explore.
Basim fits naturally into the city, being seamlessly woven into the city's rich history, its politics and most importantly its people. At one point he finds a young boy who has climbed a great height and encourages him to make the Leap of Faith. When the boy succeeds, Basim heeds the boy to find him if the fire in him doesn't burn out. As it turns out this boy's name is Hytham, and since coincidence is something rare in Assassin's Creed, Hytham would find Basim again and become a Hidden One, joining Eivor on her journey in England.
The City of Baghdad has personality on every street, the bustling marketplaces, the industrial workshops and the science districts are incredible. Baghdad is one of Ubisoft's best open worlds that they've made in a long while. While worlds like Greece and Medieval England were expansive and had a lot of effort put into them, they were often too empty and didn't have enough to make exploring them a payoff. Games like God of War (2018) strategically placed collectables around their world so that everything had a story and purpose to tell and Ubisoft seemed to have realised that it's better to emphasize a smaller world which holds better exploration.
Environment - Alamut
Making its debut is the fortress of Alamut, the Sanctuary of the Hidden Ones. In its infancy, Alamut is still heavily under construction as it’s where the Hidden Ones hold their operations. While the Hidden One’s are spread throughout Baghdad, Alamut is their home and it’s where they train. Basim spent much of his time there, during his training and would leave this great home to fight the Order in Baghdad. We’ve never seen Alamut before in the most direct sense but we have seen its predecessor in the past.
Centuries later when the Hidden One’s would move their operations to the Hold Lands they would create the fortress of Masyaf. While we can explore Alamut for a short time we can see that Masyaf was destined to be its Spiritual successor. It’s a lovely location but Unfortunately, Ubisoft did not take the chance to expand on the location further with it only being accessible through certain segments of Mirage’s story. While each time is worthwhile, it would have been better to have a dedicated area of Alamut that was always accessible to the player but it was nonetheless fun to look at as it signifies the true start of the Assassins when we first met them in the first Assassin's Creed game.
